girl clip-clopping her way around him, who let out a sigh louder and more pointed than he would have expected from such a small woman.
KIM-ANGE HAD GIVEN her a big kiss as Lissa set off.
“Into exile,” Lissa had moaned, looking sadly around the little room she was leaving behind.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Kim-Ange, bundling a cake into Lissa’s bag. “It’s not for long! It’ll be an adventure.”
“I’m being suspended,” said Lissa. “They never want me back.”
“Of course they do,” said Kim-Ange. “You’re definitely the second-best nurse on this floor.”
Lissa rolled her eyes. “Oh God,” she said. “I’ve never lived in the countryside. What’s it going to be like?”
“Think of it this way,” said Kim-Ange. “When anyone phones you don’t want to, you can just tell them your reception is cutting out.”
Lissa nodded. “I suppose.”
Kim-Ange hugged her. “Honestly. It’ll be great. Peace and quiet. Get some sleep. Read some books. Build a massive Instagram brand of you looking at misty moors. Think of it as a holiday. And come back and be fabulous with me please. And think of me. I’m the one that’s going to get some wittering country idiot being Scotch next to me!”
Lissa managed a wan smile. “I’m sure he’ll be perfectly nice.”
“Oh, you’re sure. You’re sure, are you? I don’t even want a boy on this floor.” She sniffed noisily, and Lissa gave her a hug.
“Thanks, Kim-Ange,” she said.
“The sacrifices I make! You’ll miss me every day!”
“I will miss you every day,” promised Lissa, and meant it.
Chapter 18
Lissa looked at the paperwork again, carefully, anxiously, so terrified she’d get something wrong. She was taking on the caseload of one Cormac MacPherson, who was also lending her his home.
They each had a secure NHS log-in that they could exchange patient data on, only with each other, so they could achieve continuity of care, and would be expected to debrief every day for three months. They also had to write a weekly report for HR—apparently, she discovered, they were guinea pigs for the entire scheme. At the bottom of the first page, Juan had added, “Good luck, Lissa—I think this will be a wonderful experience.”
Lissa was not thinking this. Not at all. She felt banished, pied off, reduced to being put out of sight out of mind, as if she’d gone crazy and needed to be hidden out of the way. She loved London; it was the air she breathed. The idea of being stuck out in the country was ridiculous.
She’d googled Cormac MacPherson, but his Facebook page was private and gave absolutely nothing away. He didn’t seem to be on the internet much, which was strange enough in this day and age. She’d spent more time looking at Kirrinfief on Google Earth. It was tiny!
She’d never spent much time in the country; London was all she’d ever known. She’d never been to Scotland at all.
But Lissa needed—absolutely, desperately needed—the insomnia to stop, as well as the nightmares from when she finally drifted off into a shallow, tainted half-sleep. During the day she felt grit under her eyelids, and she could not control her breath when she saw a bunch of lads on the street or heard a shout or, worst of all, a car backfiring or accelerating. If going to this godforsaken place would help her get over that, then it was worth a shot. She would have vastly preferred to be at her granny’s in Antigua, but that wasn’t an option the NHS was notably keen on offering her. So the wild north it was.
Chapter 19
Cormac was, he rapidly realized, somehow just too big for London. He’d played rugby for the army, and it had never really left him. It wasn’t just that he was tall, although he was—there were plenty of big-looking people; aye, there were plenty of people, full stop. More people, surely, he thought, than were strictly necessary or even viable. More people than you could figure out had gotten crammed into these hot, sticky streets that smelled of food and smoke and choking exhaust fumes. Didn’t they notice how revolting the air was? Maybe not. London clung to you, put greasy fingerprints all over you.
The nurses’ home was a tall, peeling eight-story building situated outside of a tube by a roundabout in what Cormac would learn to call South London.
There didn’t appear to be any automatically obvious way to get through the roundabout, which was, on closer examination, actually two roundabouts, each with four lanes of traffic. The air was a haze. Cormac